The Luck of the Mounted Part 27

"Yes, but how about that fishing expedition of ours, Gully?" said Yorke.

"You seem to have forgotten that." And he related the story of Redmond's dive.

"Ah!" retorted Gully, bitterly. "And yet you might have got snagged a hundred times there and only just cursed and snapped your line and reeled in, thinking it was a log or something. . . . Well, as I was saying, I realized the jig was up after that dog business, and directly I got home I began making preparations for my get-away last night. If you'd all only have come half an hour later than you did--That's what made me so mad--just another half hour later, mind you, and I would have been away--en route for the Coast by the night train."

Presently Kilbride threw aside his pen and straightened up. "Now, listen, Gully!" he said. And he read out the confession that he had composed from the main facts of the prisoner's remarkable statement.

"Yes!" muttered Gully thoughtfully, as the inspector finished. "Yes, that will do, Kilbride. Give me the pen, please, and I will sign it. . . ."

He proceeded to affix his signature, continuing with a sort of deadly composure: "I have endorsed and executed many death-warrants in my time--in my capacity of Deputy-Sheriff--I little thought that some day I might be called upon to sign my own . . . which this doc.u.ment virtually is. . . ."

He reared himself up to his huge, gaunt height, and with a sweeping glance at his captors added: "Nothing remains for me now I imagine, but to shake hands with--Radcliffe.[1] . . ."

And his dreadful voice died away like a single grim note of a great, deep-toned bell, tolled perchance in some prison-yard.

"_Eshcorrt_! Get ready!" boomed out Sergeant Slavin's harsh command.

The party was on the station platform. Yorke and McSporran fell in briskly on either side of their heavily-manacled prisoner, and stood watching the distant lights of the oncoming east-bound train as it rounded the Davidsburg bend.

One last despairing glance Gully cast about him at the all familiar surroundings, then he raised his fettered hands on high and lifted up his great voice:

"I have striven! I have striven!--and now!--Oh! there is no G.o.d! Bear witness there is no G.o.d! No G.o.d! . . ." he cried to the heavens.

The wild, harsh, dreadful blasphemy rang far and wide out into the night, floating over the nearby river and finally dying away a ghastly murmur up among the timber-lined spurs of Crag Canon.

And a huge, gaunt lobo wolf, lying at the crest of the draw, flung up his gray head and howled back his awful note--seemingly in echo: "There is no G.o.d! no G.o.d!"

[1] Note by Author--Canada's official executioner at this period.

CHAPTER XVI

"Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to, but it ain't much use to try--"

"Never say that," said the Surgeon, as he smothered down a sigh: "Chuck a brace, for it won't do, man, for a soldier to say die!"

"What you say don't make no diffrunce, Doctor, an'--you wouldn't lie. . . ."

"THE OLD SERGEANT"

"Git there! Come a-Haw-r-r, then! Whoa!" With a flourish, Constable Miles Sloan, the Regimental Teamster, swung the leaders of his splendid four-in-hand and pulled up at the front entrance of the Holy Cross Hospital. Slewing around on his high box-seat he addressed himself to the drag's occupants, Slavin and Yorke.

"I don't know whether they will let you see him, or not," he remarked doubtfully, "he's a pretty sick man."

"We will chance ut, anyway," mumbled Slavin, as he and Yorke climbed out of the rig. "Ye'd best wait awhile, Miles! We shan't be long."

Quietly--very quietly, Sister Marthe opened the door of room Number Fifty-six, and with list-slippered noiselessness stepped out into the corridor.

"Oh, Mon Dieu!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, startled at the sudden apparition of two scarlet-coated figures standing motionless outside the door, "Oh, m'sieurs, 'ow you fright me!" and the expressive eyes under the white coif and the shoulders and supple hands of the French-Canadian Nursing-Sister made great play.

Yorke saluted her with grave courtesy. "Sister," he said anxiously, "how is Constable Redmond doing? Can we see him?"

She glanced irresolutely a moment at the handsome, imploring countenance of the speaker, and then her gaze flickered to his huge companion. The silent, wistful appeal she read in the latter's grim, cadaverous face decided her.

"_Eheu_!" she said softly, "'e is a ver' seeck man . . . but come then, m'sieurs, if you wish it!"

Cautiously they tip-toed into the room behind her.

Yes! They decided, he was a "seeck" man all right! So sick that he could not raise his flushed, hollow-cheeked young face from the pillow to salute his comrades with his customary impious bonhomie. Now, gabbling away to himself in the throes of delirium, ever his feverish eyes stared beyond the hospital-walls westwards to Davidsburg.

With his brow contracted with an expression of vague worry, he was living over and over again the memorable night in which he had gotten his wound.

"Slavin!--Yorkey!" he kept repeating, in tones of such yearning entreaty that moved those individuals more than they cared to show. Yes, they were both of them there, standing by the side of his cot; but the poor sufferer's unseeing eyes betrayed no recognition.

The deep sorrow that oppressed Slavin and Yorke just then those worthies rarely--if ever--alluded to afterwards. Pa.s.sing the love of women is the unspoken, indefinable spirit of true comradeship that exists between some men.

For one brief, soul-baring moment the comrades stared at each other, their self-conscious faces reflecting mutually their inmost feelings; then Yorke turned to Sister Marthe.

"What does the Doctor say?" he whispered anxiously.

The nurse was about to make answer when the door was softly opened and that gentleman entered the room, accompanied by Captain Bargrave and Inspector Kilbride.

Involuntarily, from long habit of discipline, Slavin and Yorke, stiffened to "attention" in the presence of their superiors, until, with a kindly, yet withal slightly imperious gesture, the O.C. mutely signified them to relax their formal att.i.tude. The Regimental Surgeon, Dr. Sampson, a tall, gray-moustached, pleasant-faced man, nodded to them familiarly and proceeded to make minute examination of his patient's wound. From time to time he questioned and issued low-voiced instructions to Sister Marthe. Perfectly motionless, the grave-eyed quartette of policemen stood grouped around the cot, silently awaiting the physician's verdict.

Throughout, poor Redmond had continued to toss and rave incessantly.

Much of his babbling was incoherent and fragmentary--breaking off short in the middle of a sentence or dying away in a mumbling, indistinct murmur. At intervals though, his voice rang out with startling clearness.

"Ah-a-a! Here he is!" he cried out suddenly, "Gully!"--all eyes were centred on the flushed, unquiet face and restless hands. There seemed a curious, morbid fascination in watching the workings of that sub-conscious mind. "No use, Gully! You can't make it from there!"--the twitching hands made a motion as of levelling a carbine--"No use, man!

I've got you covered. . . . You' better give in! . . ."

He paused for a s.p.a.ce, panting feverishly, then his eyes became wilder and his speech more rapid.

"No! no! Gully!" he gasped out imploringly, "it's Yorkey, I tell you--oh, don't pick off Yorkey! . . . Drink? . . ."--the unnaturally bright eyes stared unseeingly at the motionless figure of the O.C., standing at the foot of the cot--"Not so much--now--since--looking after him. . . . Not a bad chap. . . . We fought once. . . . Yes, Sir! . . . had--h.e.l.l of a fight! . . . Pax? . . . sure!--bless you!--buried ruddy hatchet--auld lang syne--Slavin. . . . St. Agnes' Eve! . . . How he sings--! Oh, shut up, Yorkey!--Sings, I tell you--! Hark! . . . that's him singin'

now--Listen! . . . What? . . . it's Stevenson's 'Requiem'. . . . Burke!

Burke! . . . the ----'s always singin' that . . . goes--"

And the weak, fretful voice shrilled up in a quavering falsetto--

"_Under the wide--and--starry sky Dig--the grave, and--let me--lie; Glad did I--live, and--gladly die, And I laid--me down with--a w----_"

The shaky, pitiful tones died away in vague, incoherent mumblings.

Yorke uttered a queer choking sound in his throat, and turned his face away from the little group. Slavin, in silent comprehending sympathy, laid a huge hand on the other's shoulder to steady him. In customary British fashion, the O.C. and the Inspector strove to mask their emotions under an exaggerated grimness of mien, only their eyes betraying their feelings. The former, toying with his sweeping, fair moustache in agitated fashion, gazed drearily around the sick-room till his stern, yet kindly old eyes finally came to rest upon a framed scriptural quotation which was hanging on the wall above the head of the cot.

In corpulent, garish, black, red and gold German text the inscription ran:

_At even, when the sun was set, The sick, O Lord, around Thee lay; Oh in what divers pains they met!

Oh in what joy they went away!_